


Sweet Dreams All Covered In Rust

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 03:09:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6638857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: "You'll never be enough..."</p>
<p>(Set some time after season seven...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet Dreams All Covered In Rust

At first, it's bonding over gravel littered common ground. Divorce papers barely signed and black ink a little more than smudged in one corner.

He finds her on the porch and there's flakes of snow settled heavily on her lashes. Her breath hides her, a wall of white as she exhales, and he'd tell her Meredith isn't home, isn't likely to _be_ home, but she knows this already and it is not Meredith that she's here to see.

Her fingers fiddle at the buckle of his jeans before the front door has swung to a heavy close.

Nothing good can come of what will inevitably happen next.

But being good has never really been priority for either of them.

 

 

 

Later, it is boredom. And laziness.

And a rarely spoken desire for something, anything, that aches with familiarity.

They meet in the tunnels. And it's quick, almost vicious. The silence that separates them split only by the echo of starched cotton hitting faded linoleum floor, and the slapping sting of skin against sweat slippery skin.

Her tongue works its way between his teeth with a practiced ease. Meets with very little resistance. Steals the words he can't quite bring himself to say and swallows them down, whole.

Fills her emptied out spaces with the parts of him she knows he'll never willingly offer.

 

 

 

He ignores her for three days. Keeps his eyes on his toes and volunteers his time to the clinic lest he run the risk of meeting her at Joe's.

Panics.

Because he's been here before and it's never what it seems.

It all matters little in the end.

She corners him in a supply room. Presses him, shoulder blades to tail bone, against metal shelving that threatens to collapse on top of them with every rocking beat, and rakes her nails down his rib-cage. Doesn't even flinch as the pads of her fingertips pass over the jagged scars that spell out chain mail reminders of his vulnerability.

Takes what she wants without question and leaves again. Just to prove a point.

 

 

 

It gets easier after that.

And yet seems infinitely more difficult.

Pretense and false promises firmly in place as her panties barely make it past her knees and his lip catches between the nip and bite of bared teeth that mock all he has to offer.

If she is pretending then she is far more adept at it than he.

 

 

 

Some days they forget the act. Drop their well established lines and stumble around on the darkened stage until their hips meet or their shoulders touch and the muscle memory starts to kick in.

Anniversaries. Memorials. Commemorations. And they all come to mean the same thing in the end, as the jagged scars they resolutely deny fade but never quite disappear completely.

 

 

 

Eventually, it's because there is nothing else left.

No _one_ else left. And admitting defeat has never really been an option for either of them.

So they pretend it's what they expected all along. Stolen shards of one another used to stitch their own gaping holes; edges split to frayed and unravelling.

She kisses him and it's soft. Too soft. Willing.

The folds of her sharp angles fit a little more completely into his. Have chiselled away at enough of his concrete shell to make a hollow that aches when it's empty.

 

 

 

Along the way he waits for her to disappear. A puff of dust rubbed between palms. A set of melting footprints in the winter snow.

And he wonders if she waits for him to do the same.

Wonders if she forgets that he's tried running, that he's tried hiding, that all his escape routes have been well and truly shut down.

Ineffective as they always seemed to be.

 

 

 

In the end, he thinks it's because she's run out of options.

Can't quite reconcile his existence with any conscious choice she may have made. Figures he's become default and thinks it's probably more than he deserves.

Loops practiced fingertips into the thin strap of her bra and lets it fall to his feet. Makes promises of forever in the only way he really knows how.

Watches as she walks away and comes back.

Walks away again.


End file.
